


Catching Signals That Sound in the Dark

by storyofapainter



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-19
Updated: 2011-07-19
Packaged: 2017-10-21 13:22:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/225645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storyofapainter/pseuds/storyofapainter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Ned had had more time, he would have told Jon about his mother. <i>There should be snow on his shoulders, not on his name.</i></p><p>Warning: This story includes a frank discussion of one of the theories about Jon’s mama. There are actual spoilers for <i>A Game of Thrones </i>and theoretical spoilers for the rest of the<i> A Song of Ice and Fire</i> series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Catching Signals That Sound in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Two-Headed Boy by Neutral Milk Hotel.
> 
> Thanks to ohmygodmuffin for the beta.

He is in Winterfell. 

(He can tell first because of the smell and second because of how his heart has settled into a beat less like a frightened pigeon and more like a man.) 

It is not snowing tonight, but he always sees flakes when he looks from these windows. The castle is at its most beautiful, its most fearful and its most dangerous when there are icicles the size of children and drifts the size of mountains. 

This night it is clear. Clear and dark without a moon.

( _It is too dark for even her face._ And he shivers.) 

His solar is warm and so is he. This desk holds parchment and quills and a glass of hot wine, slowly cooling. He does not drink it, but watches it steam. It is heat-made-visible. It is eaten by air. It is what he has come here to say. A man speaking about blood and fire in the middle of a slowly freezing castle. _How much are words worth? How much do they weigh? And how hot do they burn?_

(It is nothing but winter, coming and his bones growing older. That is why he aches.) 

He is waiting for the knock on the door and calls for the boy to enter almost before the rap is done. Jon Snow stands in the doorway. _There should be snow on his shoulders, not on his name._ He can tell the boy is frightened, but knows he will not walk away.

( _He cannot walk away._ )

"Sit."

Jon does, without looking at the chair and then has to pull two books and a pot of ink out from under himself. His face is very red when he has found a place for the items on the edge of the bursting desk. 

"I am sorry about that," Ned says. He wants to cross to the boy, but this is something he has to hear and bear without extra arms. 

Jon still looks guilty, like he had left the books there himself. 

"Yes, Lord Stark."

It is meant as a formality. It is the boy, showing he fancies himself grown, but it sounds like something else hard-to-swallow ( _no water here_ ).

This boy should not have grown up one step below his sons and ward, but _Promise me, Ned_ and such fear in her eyes could buy anything. Next to the girl who had left frogs in his bed and rode like she was part of the horse, Catelyn Tully (newly bound _–bound and waiting–_ ) had shrunk to the word _wife_ (still foreign and hardly used) at home with her river lords. She was not the North. That babe, dark-haired and screaming, that boy, a training sword in his hand, this almost-man is alive and well and grown up with it on every inch of him. 

 _(He wonders, not for the first time, where the fire hides._ )

He had promised her every word she asked and thought naught of his wife, not until the jokes of going south for comfort and the bent and chipped feeling of misplaced honor. _But I was better, after. This was the one thing I asked of Cat. This one, little boy. This almost-piece of me. This last piece of her. This fire, waiting._ (And Cat had not given much. Just enough so the boy did not suffer, but he was not loved.) 

Ned wakes into his careful lies every morning and it is remembering the crumpled skull on the throne room floor which keeps them tight and real. 

( _The worth, the weight, the burn_.) 

Jon is looking at him with the guilty face he wears so well and often, especially when Cat is near. _This has not been fair to anyone_ , _but how can a man say no to the girl who_ _dared him to lick the frozen horses' trough and who laughed when it had taken the Maester and burning hot water to save his tongue._

 _(There was no taste for weeks._ )

"Father? Have you changed your mind?"

And how well Jon must have beaten back his expectations, year after year. All the half asking, all the glances at the other children which said much and more than his little words. And now to have his father breach the topic and then not deliver... 

He hesitates only because he knows Jon could bear it. Growing up a bastard has left him strong in a way which is impossible to copy. Robb, standing right next to this boy for most of his life, was not the same kind of man. Robb was strong and _his_ , but Jon understood disappointment and Jon understood loss. Yes, the boy didn't know who he was grieving over, but he had been in mourning his entire life. How high had Jon let his dreams go? Surely, when he had been a child there must have been moments when he considered the woman who bore him and did not let the facts hold. Did he imagine it was a princess? A queen? Or did it never matter the woman, so long as she would have cradled him through the winter. He suspects the latter, but also knows this truth will surpass any heights to which Jon's mind had pressed.

"No. No, I have not. It is time for you to understand yourself. It is just..." 

_You may curse me after. You may wish you were still a half-unnamed bastard, instead of what you are. I have already changed your life by giving you the name Snow, now I must change it again._

(Truly, the boy was still a bastard, but orphan would have been heard louder. And cousin. And it would have been in a way which didn't turn his wife’s back.)

_I made you what you are and now I must remake you._

 _(There had been no choice: her blood was on the bed, the roses were everywhere and Promise me._ )

"Yes, my lord?"

"You're a Stark," he says first, because he doesn't want any doubt on that fact when he says the next bit. Jon's face is so pale, even with this fire, this burning, bright fire. ( _Where is it? The worth, the weight, the burn?_ )He can see the twitching lines of the boy's mouth and knows if Jon dared to speak, dared to make this a conversation and not a silent, desperate plea, he would be saying he knew that, he knew Lord Eddard was his father, yes, yes he knew that. It was his mother he needed. 

"That is for certain," he continues. "You are just not mine."

Jon does not understand. He is casting about and everything is too much for him because his entire world is now slid carefully and surely to the edge of a teetering sword. 

"Who?" The boy whispers. 

"You do look like her, which was lucky."

"Her? Do you mean–you can't mean–your sister?"

"Lyanna," he says and he can hear the whispers. They are so loud, now, and very close. They want much from him. He would give even more. The candles do not quiver, though, so he knows it is just his mind’s tricks. 

"My mother?"

"Yes, Jon."

"I am..."

He lets the boy marvel. Lets him think, for the first time, _mother,_ and have a clear picture. A stone picture, but a picture.  _Promise me_. _Promise me, Ned. Take my child; take this boy. Do not let him die. Do not let any one else have him. Do not let Robert– Keep him. Keep him warm and safe and promise me he will grow up. Promise me. Promise._

"This means," Jon is saying now, and there is a smile on his face that Ned has never seen before, because the boy finally has something no one else has, something no one else can claim before or better, "Robb and everyone–are my cousins. But I do not understand why you pretended I was yours as well."

Part of his heart is telling him to leave it here. To say it was easier to pretend they were all the same. ( _Except it hadn't been easy and they hadn’t been the same, but the other choice had been blood crushed onto a wall._ ) He could swear he did not know. That Lyanna did not tell him. That he wanted to keep his sister's honor even as he lost his own and she lost her life. 

And Jon would take it. Jon would take it and hold the stone statue close to his heart and he might still wonder, yes, but not like he had for his mother because she is what makes him whole. She is what makes him not a sin of an otherwise valiantly noble lord. He is not a mistake, walking halls and laughing with his son as the lady follows to pull them apart. He is still bastard, still alone, but he is no longer punishable. He could give Jon this much and the boy would be satisfied. He may feel full made now, with this mother's name coursing in his veins, but he is still only half the man he could be. _Should be. Will be. Gods, let me not have ruined him so far as that._

"You are still missing a piece of the puzzle, Jon."

"Oh," he says and his eyes are the largest Ned has ever seen them. "But who was my father?" 

The question lives strange in the air between them and it must have felt stranger still for Jon, forming it. The one question he had never had to ask, now the most important words he has ever had to say. Right after he found the thing which he thought would make him whole–the name of his _mother_ –he falls from the full-sharpened edge.

 _This will be the best and worst thing Ned has ever done._  

But Jon has always been that. The best thing for Lyanna, dying with roses in her hand and words on her lips. The worst thing for his home, still unborn, but close, but growing. He isn't sure what he is letting free here, but Jon is the kind of boy who knows what to do with knowledge like this. Robb or, Gods help them, Theon, wouldn't know where to begin (beyond glory and pillage and women), but Jon has never been sure of the man he is growing into. Robb and Theon (even far from his ironhome) are both lords in the making and wear it plain. 

Jon didn't know where he would go when he was old. He toyed with the Wall and as honorable as that is–and could still be–there is something about the ice and the black which is akin to closing a door on a life. It was where men–old and young–went when they had nowhere else to welcome them, when they had no one else to be. 

Jon is almost grown now, but still unhappy with the man he sees. It shows at the edges of his person. It shows most when Robb and Theon make comments about their fathers and their lands and the things they would do as lords. There is something in Jon which has always been whispering that he should be saying similar words, but he thinks it is just jealousy. He thinks he should squash it. He thinks it is craven and weak to want more than a bastard's place in a winter castle. In truth, he does not want enough. The old kings may be gone and their conqueror may be on the throne, but Jon should still know. He should know where he could have been. 

South. Blood. Fire. _Roses_. 

So Ned straightens tall in his chair and says, "You have heard the story, no doubt. You know where Lyanna was during the war, Jon."

"No, I don't. Or I don't remember. I don't–"

He can see the very moment it hits the boy in the chest. 

"No," he says, voice thick and like he expects mummers from any corner of the room. 

And then, "She was kidnapped. He kidnapped her and he– How could he do that to my _mother_?"

Ned loves the part of the boy which stands for her honor.

"Part of her wanted to go and then all of her wanted to stay," Ned tells him. "And people always see what they want."

Jon has stood up. _He stands different_ , even now. Even seconds after. 

"I am...Targaryen? A dragon."

"In all this snow."

Jon laughs. He laughs and looks at Ned and Ned sees them both. Lyanna and Rhaegar. The ice and the fire. 

"Thank you, fa–" Jon starts, but laughs again and straightens his furs. "I suppose I should call you my uncle now or am I to keep this secret, too?"

The edge which had always been in Robb and Theon's voices is in Jon's now. _He has been practicing._

"It's yours now, to keep or not," he says. "But be careful with whom you would tell."

"I will. Uncle."

He can tell Jon likes the way that sounds. He's always had an uncle in Benjen, but Ben was only a man of the Night's Watch, not the Lord of Winterfell, not substitute father, not one who punishes and forgives in the same deep breath. 

He did not think it would be this easy. He had thought it would be more like a battle. More blood in his ears and throat–a thumping to drown out speech. ( _Boom-boom-boom. Not like a bird yet, but soon._ )

He feels closer to Jon now, having let him take a step away. This is a future worth seeing, what his sons and this man can build together. 

"If you would sit, Jon. I have details, if you care to–"

"No," Jon says and his voice is deeper than ever before, than any voice has a right to be. 

Ned looks only at the desk. The wine is cooled, but there is still steam. ( _He keeps it in snow, sleeping._ ) He knows what he will find when he looks up ( _he always finds it, in the end, no matter how easy the conversation, no matter the sounds in his ears, this world is always looking to catch spark._ )

Jon Snow is gone. There is a dragon in his place. ( _Worth._ )It is white and grey. It is a snowbank with eyes and scales and a tail. ( _Weight._ ) It opens its mouth. It is blood and death and everything melts, but especially men. ( _Burn._ )

He wakes underneath the Red Keep. He does not think, _home_ , but it is a close thing, he has been here so long and he is so tired. He feels the lines of his entire body before he decides his skin may not be on fire after all. (It is so dark, it can't be, but he is also not sure of anything, now, except the different ways his leg can hurt.) 

_And Jon. Who will tell Jon?_

He had not planned for this. ( _But who can plan for the murder of their king or the tragedy of his children or the falsity of treasonous acts, but Cersei said it in the garden and Renly in the hall and Petyr in the throne room and so it was only him who could not play at this game. Only he holding honor like it was a sword sharper than steel._ ) 

Jon should know. Jon should have that much. Jon should not die, thinking he was a dishonor to his house. ( _Winterfell. And Cat. The girls. Robb. Bran. Rickon. Cat. Cat. Cat._ ) Cat should know as well. Maybe ( _not truly, but in his heart_ ), most of all. 

He would scream if he could swallow here, without water for what might have been days. 

The attempt brings up blood. 

Not five feet away (as the crow flies and dark plays tricks) he sees her. What a family they are, with her dead and he a prisoner and her son ( _a babe, dark and screaming, the worth, the weight, the burn –but who will tell Cat–_ ) a watcher on a frozen wall. 

He can no longer keep the promise. He can no longer watch him grow, no longer keep him safe. _But he does not know and those who do, are few and far and keep their secrets._ If he cannot be there to raise a sword in defense, maybe it is better to have failed. If Jon does not know his name, if he does not know his blood–it won’t keep him safe forever, but he won’t die for the fire of which he knows nothing. He will die for the world in which he was raised, on his false-and-now-forever name. 

There is no blood on her dress, but there are blue roses in her hair. She isn't smiling, but she isn't crying either. She is only watching him. She was young and beautiful and sweet and kind. And war fuel all the same.  

_And I was brave and strong and quick and clever. And I did not love that man I was to marry, but I also did not know how much he loved me. Still. Still, all that. Still running and war and the tower and that bed and the blood and the fever, still. Still._

_Still._

"Lya," he whispers.

When she breaks into a smile (the kind she only wore when racing horses and winning) that is the moment Ned knows death is near.


End file.
